Political elites and local identities: Ethnicity and memory in the construction of identity representations in a municipality of Rio Grande do Sul

Abstract

This article aims to analyze the actions carried out by a local political leadership of a small and recently emancipated municipality located in upstate Rio Grande do Sul, aimed at defining a representative image of place based on ethnic and mnemonic criteria. The agent, endowed with multi-notability in the spheres of politics and intellectuality/culture, was responsible, throughout the exercise of successive mandates in the municipal Executive, for raising German ethnicity to public and official landmarks in the municipality, which is expressed in the establishment of a Germanized public sphere and the systematic construction of historical monuments. In terms of methodology, the article is based on an ethnography of sites of memory, combined with the interview technique and the analysis of the agent’s intellectual and bibliographical production. The discussion made it possible to reflect on the role of local elites for the definition of symbols and representative images of the place, verifying the role of local identity symbols for the legitimization of newly emancipated municipalities, as well as the political and electoral dividends obtained by the agent resulting from the investment in ethnicity and memory.